Hi there! My name is the Anne-girl. Actually my name is Carolyn but on the internet I go by the Anne-girl (or just Anne, or Annie). Some of you may know me from my previous blog "His Princess" (later called "The Path of Life") more of you probably know me from my writing blog Scribblings. And some of you don't know me at all.
Allow me to introduce myself then.
I am fifteen going on sixteen and when I was thirteen going on fourteen I read Do Hard Things for the first time. Right now I'm about halfway through my third reading of it. It's a great book. If you can get ahold of a copy I would suggest you do. If you can't there is a blog that the authors write called the Rebelution that covers most of the stuff in the book. I would suggest starting at the second section of the sidebar reading the articles down until you get to the end and then reading the top section.
But anyway when I was thirteen I read Do Hard Things for the first time. Basically the massage of the book is that God did not create us to sit around. And that teenagers everywhere have untapped potential to do great things if they would only wake up and do them.
I read the book and I immediately wanted to put what I read into action. I had only one problem. I didn't understand the word "hard". I thought hard meant "big" or "important" or "fun" or "exciting" or "let's all stand up and cheer for Anne". Ouch.
So I tried different stuff. I started a blog for girls called His Princess thinking I was going to start the next rebelution blog or something like it. What actually happened was that I wrote less and less frequent puffed up little posts about how it was my way or the highway (I struggle with self-righteousness and seeing things as very one way). I also tried to start a fundraiser for an emergency pregnancy center near where I live. That never got passed the planning stage because my ideas were wild farfetched and impractical. And because I dropped the ball on it. Laziness is one of my talents.
So both rebelutionary efforts of mine failed. I was discouraged and annoyed and disillusioned. And it was all because I could understand that hard meant heard. Not Big. Not Important. Not Noticeable. Hard.
Sometimes hard things are big and noticeable and important and Alex and Brett had included plenty of examples of those kind of hard things in their book. But they had also included examples of people who did small hard things. Small as in "nobody noticed" not "unimportant". And to thirteen year old Anne those weren't exciting enough. So I skimmed over the passages that said things like "pursue excellence" and "all effort even failed effort produces muscle" and "sometimes the smallest things can be the hardest things" what it boils down to is I wanted to be part of something big but I didn't want to change my lifestyle.
So that's what this blog is about. The small side of "Do Hard Things" this blog is my response to a great book and a wonderful movement. Here I want to explore the rebelutionary lifestyle. What it means to have Do Hard Things pervade every part of your life. And so while fundraisers are great and I applaude those who do them (who knows maybe someday I'll do one myself) right now I'm focussing on learning to live my life the hard way by following God and doing the right thing in every aspect of my life not just the parts that show.
But I don't want to do this alone. This is an open blog. If you have a story you'd like to share about the day to day struggle of being a Christian or some thoughts you'd like to share send them to me at annegirlauthoress@gmail.com I do reserve the right to not publish something I don't feel fits the message of this blog or is not God honoring.
Alex and Brett if you read this thank you for writing a wonderful book.
This blog is small and the feat of getting up when the alarm goes off in the morning is small as well but neither of them, I think are unimportant.
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